A St. Cyr & Kohler mystery
15 primary works • 16 total works
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Book 7
Book 8
Book 8
Book 9
Book 11
Book 13
Before the war, the hotels of Vittel hosted the wealthiest members of French society. Now, in the winter of 1943, two of France's most luxurious resorts have been converted into an internment camp for British and American women who failed to escape the country when the German army stormed across the border. For two years, the prisoners have lived quietly, surviving on Red Cross aid packages, but now they are beginning to die. An American woman is found stabbed through the heart with a pitchfork. By the time inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler arrive from Paris, rigor mortis and the February frost have frozen her solid. In her pockets are Cracker Jacks and Hershey bars--bribes intended for one of the guards. To bring justice to Vittel, St-Cyr and Kohler will have to unravel the conspiracy that is at the heart of this luxurious, elegant hell.
Book 14
It is February 1943, and Paris is under a blackout. For three years, the French inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo have investigated the mundane violence of Nazi-occupied France, but never have they experienced such a cold, sleeting winter. While investigating a burgled stamp collector's shop, they get a call telling them that they went to the wrong crime scene-they were supposed to have been sent to comfort a woman who was attacked for running around with Nazis and their collaborators. The rapist's timing was perfect-so perfect that the two detectives wonder if they were deliberately sent to the wrong place.
They next follow up on a tip about a body dumped in a cellar. The young man they find has been stripped naked, savagely murdered, and left to rot. Was he a homosexual? A pimp? A Resistance fighter? Theft, murder, rape-conspiracy. It is just another night in Paris under the Nazis.
Book 15
During the Great War, Hermann Kohler and Jean-Louis St-Cyr fought in Alsace on opposite sides of the barbed wire. Two decades later, they return as partners: a Gestapo officer and a French cop investigating everyday crimes in a world gone mad with war. In February 1943, Alsace is unrecognizable-an occupied country where speaking French is all it takes to lose one's freedom. St-Cyr and Kohler have been summoned to a POW camp where soldiers and resistants manufacture textiles on the grounds of a deserted carnival. Where industry and warfare overlap, they will find a conspiracy worthy of the most twisted house of mirrors.
Two prisoners of this garish, decrepit circus have killed themselves, and the jailers must at least make a show of finding out why. Although the trenches of the Great War are long gone, St-Cyr and Kohler find that in Alsace, the fires of battle smolder still.
Book 16
The last time Jean-Louis St-Cyr visited the ruins of this ancient abbey, during one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Great War, a sniper nearly killed him. Three decades later, death has brought him here again. Ever since the German occupation of France, the chief inspector has worked alongside German detective inspector Hermann Kohler, solving crimes too common to pique the Gestapo's interest. Now, during the fall of 1943, the war is going badly for the Third Reich, but conflicts continue to plague these two unlikely allies.
A bank-owned cargo van is parked near the crumbling monastery, its contents ransacked, its passengers murdered. The killers took small bills but left behind a bounty in smuggled champagne, cheese, and coffee. Even more confounding is the expensive pair of high heels left behind. Were the thieves from the Resistance, or from the underworld? Who is the mysterious woman who was wearing those shoes? St-Cyr and Kohler have a feeling that the answers are hiding in the cold French rain.